War against Terra

- / -

There is an unrecognized logic to America's "War against Terror". A problem
of pronunciation signals a problem of comprehension. This was recently drawn
to my attention by the title of the UN Environment Programmes's INFOTERRA information
system. In most English and American dialects there is no distinction in the
pronunciation between "Terror" and "Terra". The unconscious implications of
this are explored below.

Dominating nature

"The industrial model is constructed on the presumption that nature functions
like a machine and that humanity's role is to force nature's gears. It uses
the metaphor of the Model T Ford Factory that makes mass produced commodities.
Competition is the primary economic and scientific process in the industrial
model: species compete in an ecology and nations compete through their corporations
in the global market. For many, it is difficult to see how we might clothe,
feed and shelter ourselves without dominating nature. And for farmers and others
who produce our food, it does seem as if the only way to feed the world is to
conquer and subdue nature for the benefit of an increasing population of humans
- to mass-produce a homogeneous commodity. This kind of production ethic is
in fact an ethic: it is a definition of what is good....By some measurements,
the industrial model has had incredible successes. It has provided an array
of technologies and large financial returns for medicine, agriculture, and information.
But it has also caused unexpected and widespread damage to the environmental
and public health. We are all aware of the litany of environmental problems
that include radioactive waste, holes in the ozone layer, endocrine disruption
and global warming. " (Carolyn Raffensperger and Peter deFur, A Paradigm
Shift: Rethinking Environmental Decision Making and Risk Assessment, 1997)

Many have remarked on the consistency of American actions against the environment
over the past decades -- disproportionate use of non-renewable resources, denial
of global warming, and culminating in refusal to be associated with the Kyoto
process. As has been clearly said by George Bush, "the American Way of
Life is non-negotiable".

This attitude might be said to derive largely from the historically recent
pioneering tradition so important to American culture. The continent had to
be conquered. Nature from the early days was a harsh enemy. A place for colonists
had to be carved out. Any opposition by "unreasonable", especially
"uncivilized", indigenous peoples had to be dealt with by conquest
and their restriction to reservations. Dangerous wild animals (bears, wolves,
etc) had to be killed off. Others had to be exploited (bison, etc). The challenge
was to tame and domesticate the continent. Any opposition to this process was
inherently inimical.

The American culture is built on a war against Nature that it has only recently
been able to assume has been won -- although floods, hurricanes, tornadoes,
and winter freezing, suggest that this is not yet wholly the case.

War against Terra

In these terms it is understandable that the USA must continue to see it as
necessary to wage war against Nature on a larger scale to ensure a continuing
supply of resources for its non-negotiable lifestyle. This "War against Terra"
is a logical extension of its traditional approach to conquering and subduing
Nature in order better to exploit its resources. The threat to vital supplies
of oil and other natural resources are but a natural extension of this mindset.

The acquisition of these resources by the USA has been increasingly questioned,
resisted or opposed by various movements and schools of thought. In recent years
these have taken the form of pro-environmentalists and "anti-globalists"
who have demonstrated dramatically against the traditional exploit-nature logic
now carried so effectively by the strategies of multinational corporations.
The most recent demonstrations (Seattle, Genoa, etc) have forced major shifts
in mainstream thinking about what were previously perceived as marginal political
nuisances. In effect the exploitative globalization movement, built on exploit-nature
logic, lost the "propaganda war". This was both unforeseen and intolerable.

War against Terror

The ongoing challenge of the Middle East offered recent examples of "terrorism"
which could be readily neglected -- being so far from the American continent.
However the attacks of 11th September 2001 showed with crystal clarity that
there was dangerous worldwide opposition to the global implications of an unfettered
American Way of Life. Within a few days it became essential -- as with the traditional
challenge of wild beasts and savages emerging dangerously from the surrounding
wilderness -- to shift into a Them-or-Us logic to safeguard the threatened modern-day
colonists of the economic globe on which Americans were seemingly dependent
for their survivial.

In these terms there was no operational difference between threats by savages
and wild beasts in the recent past and current threats by "terrorists".
In fact the second evoked the heroism extolled in American culture in responding
to the first. As such it has provided an integrating focus for a culture suffering
from the cultural ills of modernity (boredom, apathy, meaninglessness, depression,
etc). These had given rise to substance abuse and crime -- already justifying
a "war against drugs" and a "war against crime". It is ironic
that modern jargon expresses high value for positive experiences by describing
them as "terrific" -- whilst at the same time investing heavily in
media and other experiences offering the excitement of "terror". Analysts
may in future determine that American culture is permeated by an ambiguous relation
to real and imagined terrors that has been momentarily crystallized, sharpened
and polarized by the current crisis.

Clearly there was a strong case for focusing the attention of the American
people in a "War against Terror" that required the kinds of sacrifice
associated in the American culture with forming the wagon train into a protective
circle from which to defend the colonists against the savage outside world.

Conflation

Under conditions of threat, there is little room for distinction. It is indeed
very much a case of Them-or-Us. Demonstrators opposing in any way the pioneering
activity of multinational corporations essential to the security of the American
economy could not usefully be distinguished from the dangers to that economy
posed by terrorists. And of course there were those anxious to exploit the opportunity
to frame any opposition to corporate economic logic as inherently identical
to the dangerous opposition by terrorists -- again Them-or-Us. Having lost the
intellectual case for corporate-style "globalization", this negative
reframing was the only strategy left.

It is therefore understandable why anti-globalists, pro-environmentalists and
anti-war protestors have in effect been lumped together with "terrorists" in
legislation rushed through in violation of due democratic process. The point
has been made that even anti-apartheid demonstrations could well have been quashed
under "terrorist" legislation. This could well have been true of the
civil rights protests of the 1960s. Using a "binary" logic, all forms
of protest and dissent must necessarily be framed as a threat to a civilization
governed by that logic.

Given the consistency with which America has engaged in an implicit "War against
Terra" in its anti-environmental activities over the past years, there is therefore
an inherent logic to blending it into a "War against Terror". Given the "terrifying"
qualities of Nature which the American culture encountered and overcame -- and
by which it was largely formed -- it is only too logical to perceive these terrors
as re-emergent through terrorism. Hence the unconscious conflation of Terra
with Terror. Essentially it is a "War against Otherness" -- with all
the associated psychological dangers.

Diversity

Nature is built on diversity. Modern civilization has great difficulty in dealing
with diversity in practice -- however much it is appreciated in principle. The
limitations of the mind require things to be simple. Therefore "Nature"
has to be "simplified" for civilization to be possible. Terra is constituted
by a diversity of species -- some of them highly dangerous to each other and
to humans -- as humans are to some of them. Those species dangerous to humans
have to be eliminated or contained for "civilization" to be possible.
Humans organize their threat to other species through their domestication of
species on which humans can feed. Wild stallions have to be shot because they
encourage herds to act independently and because they disseminate disruptive
genes.

Similarly, Terror is about the threat of any chaotic diversity of perspectives
-- some of them highly dangerous to each other. Therefore such diversity has
to be "simplified" for "civilization" to be possible. Those
perspectives dangerous to the western -- especially American -- understanding
of civilization have to be eliminated or contained. Other perspectives have
to be "domesticated" for appreciation by tourists and media audiences
-- as exemplified by the National Geographic. Thre is a need for credibly
neutered news (perhaps exemplified by CNN). Intellectual "stallions"
have also to be shot because of their tendency to create unrest, to lead people
in unwelcome directions, and to disseminate their disruptive memes.

Curiously the nature of Terra as a complex ecosystem is as difficult to comprehend
conceptually as is the nature of Terror. It is is easy to provide neat definitions
in both cases. But there is little consensus in practice as to what is meant
in each case. Everyone is "against" Terror, just as everyone is "for"
Terra. But this is only true at a definitional level that is of little practical
relevance for the many concerned parties. In the case of Terra, for some it
is sunsets and birdsong -- but for others it is trophy hunting, strip mining
and exploiting fishery resources. In the case of Terror, for some it is the
death of innocents, whereas for others it is "freedom fighting". American
intellectuals in particular have been absolutely unable to come to grips with
the involvement of the USA in training "terrorists" for action in
Latin America. Patterns of deep denial are characteristic of the approach to
both Terra and Terror.

One of the unfortunate consequences of the interaction between humans and Nature
is that an encounter with a single wild beast -- bear, wolf, crocodile, snake,
tiger -- that threatens the life of a human, results immediately in an outcry
for the suppression of every representative of that species. The species may
even be described as inherently "evil". A similar pattern is evident
in the case of any alternative perspective that may have threatened a particular
individual -- as illustrated by the response to some sects and cults (whether
really dangerous, or only stereotyped as such).

Within American culture, the response harks backs to the days of the Pilgrim
Fathers whose Puritan ethic (still extolled by contemporary religious advisers
of President Bush) had views as rigid as the Taliban concerning women and other
matters -- and especially perspectives different from their own. This extended
to prohibition of dancing, drinking, card playing, ribaldry, fashionable clothes
and other amusements. When the Puritans temporarily gained control in England,
they banned entertainments, closed theaters, and prescribed the death penalty
for sex outside of marriage. In the USA, their body guilt and shame became the
law of the land; sexual offences in the sixteenth century were punished by the
whipping of both parties. Puritans in Massachusetts set up a religious police
state in which deviation from their religion could result in flogging, pillorying,
hanging, banishment, having one's ears cut off, or having one's tongue bored
through with a hot iron. Exactly how fanatical were many of the early Christian
settlers, and as an illustration of just how badly they were infected with the
worst excesses of that religion, was illustrated by the Salem witch hunt, which
took place in colonial Massachusetts in 1692. This resulted (following appropriate
torture) in the execution of 20 people and the imprisonment of 150. It is useful
to explore whether the "evil" of which Osama bin Laden has been accused
- seemingly on the basis of equally circumstantial evidence -- has not triggered
a collective psychic response framed unconsciously by this traumatic formative
period in American culture. The pursuit of him has many characteristics of a
witch hunt -- perhaps unconsciously designed to purify American society through
the kind of cathartic, scapegoating process necessary to the stability of a
conceptually "closed" society.

Western civilization has been unable to come to terms with the violence of
Nature which sustains life on Earth. Every species is some other species' lunch.
Humans sustain their own lives by depriving other species of life -- and in
large part by depriving human competitors of their share of vital resources.
Most animals live in constant fear of their lives -- as do significant numbers
of humans, including millions of Americans so closely associated with a gun
culture "for self-defence". The details of the slaughter of animals
for human consumption are however considered unfit for the eyes of any but a
few. But humans are pleased to watch endless documentaries of the slaughter
of one species by another -- and to watch humans and animals being savaged in
violent sports, or "murdered" nightly in movies. But although footage
of isolated Afghans being executed by the Taliban was repeatedly shown to justify
the war -- there has been a total clampdown on the massacres of hundreds of
Taliban by the allies of the USA (backed by US Special Forces).

Partnership with Otherness

As many who work with Nature (rather than against it) are aware, this involves
a form of complex partnership and stewardship. These proactive terms may unfortunately
also be deliberately interpreted to disguise forms of dominance, exploitation
and servitude that are the antithesis of true partnership.

The same may be true in relating to cultures that do not exemplify the values
of western civilization. In principle there are ways of establishing sustainable
partnerships between different cultures and civilizations to the mutual benefit
of all. Some of these may also have a quality of stewardship. In practice this
partnership relationship may also be deliberately interpreted so as to disguise
forms of dominance, exploitation and servitude that are again the antithesis
of true partnership.

The mindset sustaining a "War against Terror", or a "War against
Terra", is therefore essentially opposed to Otherness of any kind. It is
not able to form sustainable partnerships. This is perhaps best exemplified
by the fact that it has been impossible to determine which countries, other
than the USA and the UK, actually form part of the "global coalition against
terror". Nuances of perspective cannot be handled by the Them-or-Us mindset
-- as will be evident in efforts to form a sustainable "broad-based democratic
government" grouping the complex ethnic groups of Afghanistan. Partnership
is then only possible on the basis of the opportunistic rules of the dominant
partner -- as is now becoming evident in European legislative responses imposed
by the American requirements for future business in their Them-or-Us world (eg
data privacy, etc).

The special problem for those engaged in the "War against Terror"
is that those with "other" views must necessarily be defined as "terrorists"
or at least as "terrorist fellow-travellers". This means that all
debate that is not founded on unquestioning belief in the validity of that war
is prohibited -- undermining any form of dialogue, basic to democratic society,
for an indeterminate period (up to 50 years, according to some estimates). With
the conflation of "terror" and "terra", a new term is being
applied by mainstream authorities to any that are out of sympathy with the single
dominant vision, namely "rejectionist". As with "infidel"
in Islam, this has now become a term of opprobrium -- that can justify personal
intimidation, harassment and violence, and increasingly legal action or even
state-sanctioned assassination. Dialogue with "the other" is excluded
by definition -- as exemplified by George Bush's refusal to negotiate with the
Taliban (after having covertly done so as soon as he came into power).

Worse in many ways, is the fact that the Them-or-Us logic then inhibits any
possibility of dealing with complexity as typified by natural ecosystems, social
ecosystems or the ecology of knowledge -- all basic to management of a complex
society dependent on interdependence in complex natural systems. A typical response
to Otherness, avoiding proximity, is exemplified by the carpet bombing strategy
favoured by the Americans in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistian -- there is no alternative
if dangerous contamination by the Other is to be avoided. How many Americans
have met a Taliban face-to-face or endeavoured to engage with them?

"Terraism", "Terraists", etc

Given the above conflation, there is a case for exploring the need for terms
such as the following -- and clarifying their possible significance. Note that
most are often indistinguishable in their pronunciation from the Terror variant::

Terraism: a belief in the inherent value of Nature and the environment,
as opposed to "terrorism" against the environment

Terraists: people acting on their belief in the inherent value of the environment,
as opposed to "terrorists" inducing dangerous stresses into environmental
systems

Terrafied: a person grounded in their belief in the Earth (in contrast to
the punitive use of "grounded" in relation to disciplining of children),
as opposed to being "terrified" by Nature (spiders, snakes, wild
beasts, etc)

Terrarising: conscientization of awareness of Nature and Earth, as exemplified
by those extolling the merits of the Gaia metaphor, as opposed to "terrorizing"
species in the ecosystem

Terraist fellow-traveller: a person who associates with those who hold belief
in the inherent value of Terra, as opposed to to one who associates with those
who seek to disrupt the environment

Anti-terraist: actions or peoples opposed to Nature or Terra

Terra-forming: the (re)adaptation of the environment to the patterns of
Nature

Terra firma: that portion of Nature that provides solid ground on which
humans can construct artefacts

Terra incognita: that part of Nature and natural processes that remains
essentially unknown

Terra miraculos: that part of Nature and natural processes that has an essentially
miraculous quality for life

Terra nulius: that part of Nature, and especially the land surface, that
has not been appropriated or annexed

Terra putura: that land subject to customary right whereby a portion of
its produce may be taken from the tenants

"Terra-tory" potentially offers great insight into the ambiguities
of the current crisis. "Tory" is best recognized as representing an
upholder of the conservative, establishment regime -- especially in the UK.
However for Americans it also signifies someone who assisted the British when
American colonists were revolting against them -- as "terrorists"?
Earlier still it indicated the most hot-headed asserters of the royal prerogative
-- prior to which it signified the marauding dispossessed in distant lands,
notably bandits and "terrorists" (according to one dictionary). These
complex and ambivalent associations help to clarify the way in which "territory"
might be both a bounded domain controlled by an establishment regime, whilst
simultaneously recalling the disruptive, dispossessed "terrorists"
with claims on that domain. The former are capable of imposing their will within
the domain through one form of "terror", whilst the latter respond
with a second. Implicit in "terra-tory" is therefore much of the dynamic
of the Middle East, the challenges of indigenous peoples, and the aspirations
of humans to assert their dominion over Terra -- as "Tories" terrorized
by the vagaries of Nature's forces.

Given that the major legislative measure in the USA in response to Terrorism
(and Terrorists) is named the "Patriot Act" (26 October 2001) -- it
becomes important to understand how this single-country focus contrasts with
that of Terraism (and Terraists). Terraism has an inherently global focus. It
is concerned with the sustainability of environmental and other systems on a
global scale. Ironically this is dramatically contrasted with the narrow and
unsustainable economic preoccupation of US-inspired corporate "globalization"
that has so closely associated itself with the "War against Terror"
-- being the most threatened by any Terraist perspective. Within the conceptual
and legal framework now established by the USA, "patriotism" must
ensure the survival of the American Way of Life at any cost to other peoples.
This is totally opposed to any understanding of the survival of the lifestyles
of citizens of any other nations -- except insofar as their economic activities
contribute to the American lifestyle. In contrast, a Terraist perspective seeks
to use the intellectual and legal resources of humanity to reconcile the needs
of all citizens of Terra -- a perspective that is now effectively treasonous
within the USA.

The use of the term "Patriot" makes a further point concerning the
"War against Terror". It is essentially a derivative of male consciousness
(as exemplified by the "Patriot Missile" used in the Gulf War) --
the subject of so much criticism from a feminist perspective. It has associations
with "Fatherland" -- itself a limited notion. Missing from this approach
is any sense of "Motherland" or "Matriot" -- a term recently
coined in the USA. And for a Terraist, the use of the term "Patriot"
is already further indication of the manner in which thinking is locked into
binary logic excluding or rejecting the other -- in this case the femine complement.
The sustainability of Terra and of Nature is dependent on a healthy relationship
between the two genders -- through which new life is engendered. It is dependent
on complementarity in a complex world of interdependencies. The "War against
Terror" is indeed a "War against Terra" -- and against the essence
of life of any form.

A "terraist" is necessarily a "terrorist" to anyone at war with
Nature

But can we afford to relax -- if its just a pronunication problem?

Should "Friends of the Earth" be renamed "Friends
of Terra"?

How will the extra-terrestials respond -- and how will humans
respond to extra-terrestrials?

References

Anthony Judge:

911+ Questions in seeking UnCommon Ground: and protecting the Middle Way
from binary thinking, 2001 [text]